We all know the hurdles we face when we start working online and how frustrating it can be to try and generate some form of income for your efforts, most of us have been pulling our hair out with that at some stage so I’m sure you can relate to my photo.

We know that lots of people throw the towel in through frustration and walk away from internet marketing altogether, kicking their dreams across the floor and jumping all over them as they go.

I don’t know about you, but I find it heartbreaking when people return to pounding the pavement looking for an alternative way of making money, especially when they haven’t given it their all in their pursuit of living their dream.

Maybe they’ve been chasing the shiny magic buttons with promises to get rich quick. I know many have and it’s a shame that people still believe there’s such a button because we all know, I hope, that there’s no such thing.

To make it work for you online takes hard work, dedication and direction. Yet some people work extremely hard and are dedicated to what they do but still struggle to generate an income.

Passion alone isn’t enough to help you find the success you desire and deserve, never mind the extra income, we need to do something with our passion for it all to come together.

Many of us blog about our passions, which is really good and will help you build lasting relationships that will help in many ways: Traffic, friendships, contacts, getting recognized and learning new things…. But does it help with your income?

Have you made any money from your passion to date?

One of the best ways of generating an income online is to start creating products. I know it’s easier said than done but you have the passion so what’s stopping you from creating the products?

Self doubt? Direction? Know how? Ideas? Time? Cost? Tools?

I’ve been there and know about them all as I’ve faced them myself. My first eBook took my over a year to complete because I doubted myself and allowed that doubt to hold me back. When I think back to those times I could kick myself……… “What would I be doing now?”….. If, But’s and Maybe’s….

That doesn’t have to be you, you’ve got the passion just not the products…. yet!

Well I want to help as many people as possible start creating products with:

From Passion to Products

An eBook about writing eBooks that takes you by the hand and guides you through each step, starting with asking why you want to write an eBook and what you’d like to achieve from it.

Once you know this you’ll have the direction you need.

Then we deal with picking your topic and getting ideas of what people want and where to find out exactly what’s selling.

We then move on to:

The layout of your eBook

How to focus on each chapter, one at a time

The writing

The graphics

The editing

The bling

Other ways of creating products

The next steps

….and so much more.

Like I said, I’ve been where you are and I want to help as many people as possible to start creating products and generating an income.

So if you’re yet to start creating products of your own, or you want to improve those you’ve created, then why not let me take you by the hand and show you how to go….

From Passion To Products

Step by step with everything you’ll need in one place.

Once you’ve created one product you’ll soon be creating the second and third.

So lets make 2012 your best year online yet and start to earn that ever extra income you desire and deserve.

Bonus: When I bought CommentLuv Premium I received some free bonuses, one of which was some eBook templates. So I’ve been in touch with Andy Bailey and asked if I could include them with this product. Andy has kindly agreed, so not only will you learn how to write your first eBook you’ll also have some templates to get you started.

Comments: I love to read and reply to your comments. So please share your thoughts and tell me, do you have any products of your own? What are you working on at the moment?

Share the post: All the tools are in place for you to share the post with your friends and followers so please use them and help me get the word out on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn and Stumble Upon, please use them all and help as well as your friends and followers. This could be just what they need

Until next time, Think about what you could be doing in a few months time

Part of the Learn With Sally coaching covers creating a Product in one of the easiest ways I’ve ever come across.

We were told to Grab A Guru and interview them over Skype, record the Skype call and then transcribe the audio file or have it transcribed for by a third party.

Getting a guru to agree to an interview would have meant approaching loads of them over and over again until one agreed, unless of course you know one already and are in touch with them on a personal basis.

Last year I won a free transcription from Dawn Kay who owns First Class Transcriptions and at the time of my win I wrote a post asking my readers who they would interview if they were me.

Of all the comments that were left one in particular stood out as it said rather than interview a guru why not interview someone that is further up the success ladder than myself that impresses me and I aspire to.

Now this approach really got me thinking so I posted a thread on a forum that I’m a member of to see if anyone was interested in my interviewing them. I didn’t get a reply so I put the thought to the back of my mind.

This time when interviewing a guru came up I remembered the earlier comment so turned my attention in a different direction.

Who impresses me? Who do I aspire to? Who is approachable?

Regular readers will already know that I turned my attention to my good friend and blogging superstar Adrienne Smith, who agreed to let me interview her. Now I should point out that I have interviewed Adrienne and it went really well. There is a product coming in the near future, but I’ve put it to one side for now so as to finish another project that I had already started.

So, I had found who I’d like to interview and asked Adrienne if she’d agree, which obviously she did. My next step was to write a post and ask my readers if they had any questions they’d like me to ask.

I then listed my questions, chose 10 of the more important ones and forwarded them to Adrienne for her approval and exchanged our Skype ID’s.

I then purchased Pamela For Skype so as to be able to record the interview as an audio file to send to Dawn for her to transcribe.

Adrienne and I agreed a time for the interview so I had to make sure everything was ready. In doing so I had a Skype chat with Dawn to ensure that Pamela was working and I knew my way around, which wasn’t hard as you just hit the record button, but it’s always “best to test”.

As our appointment drew closer I had to make sure that there wouldn’t be any interruptions so I:

• Turned my email program off,

• Turned the home phone off,

• Put a “Do Not Disturb” note on my office/bedroom door,

• Left my mobile phone in the other room,

• Printed out my questions

• Got the highlighter pen at the ready so as to mark off the questions as I asked them.

Adrienne and I connected on Skype, had a little chat and then got the interview under way. As I said it all went really well and I will be making it available to all of my subscribers, friends, followers and readers in the very near future.

Just prior to the interview with Adrienne I was approached by Jean Shaw, who asked if she could interview me about the Learn With Sally coaching. Jean is very experienced with online interviews and has a website dedicated to them at www.jeanshawinterviews.com I thought this would be a good exercise and practice for my one so I agreed. You can listen to that interview by visiting Jean Shaw Interviews LWS students.

Jean doesn’t record her interviews with Pamela For Skype instead she uses Audacity, which is a free software. I’ve never used it myself but Jean uses it all the time, so if/when you’re thinking of conducting interviews yourself you may like to give it a try.

I was then asked by Sylviane Nuccio if she could interview me, I agreed and asked her to send her questions through which she did shortly afterwards.

Now the interview with Sylviane had a few hiccups along the way, it was her first and a good learning curve for us both. We conducted the interview the first time and I thought it went really well, Sylviane asked some really good questions and had a nice flow to the whole thing. Later that day she informed me that my voice was very faint and asked if we could do it again, which of course wasn’t a problem.

We linked up again and started recording only this time my old overworked PC thought it was chasing Sebastian Vettel around a formula one track and was racing to keep up. I suggested we stop the interview before it crashed and died

I had got a new PC for Christmas so quickly set about setting it up and getting all my programs loaded onto it

On our third attempt I also recorded the interview, with Pamela For Skype, just in case anything went wrong. We both tested our recording software prior to starting, both worked well so we got the interview under way. When we had finished Sylviane informed me that she was having trouble with her recording so I zipped up mine and sent it to her. When the interview is available I’ll let you know

Now I should point out that Sylviane was using CamStudio to record the interview as she is going to turn it into a series of videos. I’ve used the software myself and found it very good, but the videos I created with it were only 10-15 minutes long.

While I can recommend CamStudio for creating short screen capture videos, I don’t recommend it for interviewing people due to the issues Sylviane suffered.

So there you have it, my experiences of conducting interviews over Skype. As I said I can’t comment on Audacity as I’ve never used it, but bear in mind that Jean Shaw uses it all the time and it’s free.

Pamela For Skype works a treat and offers a free trial of 30 days. The trial version will only allow you to record up to 15 minutes in length whilst the Pro version is unlimited and records Skype video calls as well.

So if you’re thinking of conducting interviews be sure to have a little play around with whatever software you are going to use and make sure that it’s working before the big event.

I hope that by telling you all of my experiences with interviews you’ll be able to start holding them yourselves and get everything you need in place before starting them.

Your Shout!!

As you know I love to read and reply to your comments so please share your views:

If you have experience of interviews please share them with my readers and help me encourage them to start conducting interviews and maybe even create a product from them.

If you’ve not conducted an Interview over Skype please let us know if you’ll now consider doing so or is it something you fear?

If you found this post helpful, or think it may help your friends or followers, please help me get the word out to them by sharing the post via the Social Share Buttons on display.

Until next time, think products

I wish you all a Happy Prosperous New Year and hope that you can make this year your best year online, and I hope to help you achieve that.

I should have written this post last week but I had my head down finishing a project that I’ve been working on for some time, it’s nearly ready for launching but more on that at a later date

Ok, onto the post:

What would you like to achieve this year?

The majority of my readers are already blogging, but are you achieving the success you desire and deserve?

It does take time to find success online but you can fast track that, in just 12 weeks, if you want to take action and get yourself a mentor. The only recommendation I make is Sally Neill’s Learn With Sally The Replays. Regular readers will know that I have taken the course and am now seeing success from doing so.

The course doesn’t only cover blogging it also covers traffic foundations, Social Media success, 3 types of video creation, email marketing, easy product creation and a whole lot more.

You only have to look around my blog and you’ll see the evidence of what I have learnt from Sally. Check out my videos and see how they’ve improved since taking the course, I still have to pinch myself sometimes

I can’t sing Sally’s praises loud enough, she really is a great mentor that cares about her students and wants us all to succeed. Our success is Sally’s success and that is what she strives for: Our success!!

2011 was my best year online and I have Sally Neill to thank for that.

Maybe you’re on a tight budget and want to try and create something yourself. Which is fine as long as you know what you’re doing and everything that needs doing to complete your projects.

So many of us start something and never quite finish it, which is why I recommend getting yourself a mentor. We can do it as long as we put our minds to it and constantly take action to achieve our goals.

Many of us doubt ourselves when it comes to creating something. The first ebook I wrote took me over 12 months to finish simply because I doubted myself and you know what….. by the time I had finished it eBay changed their rules and my eBook was dead in the water.

Arrggg self doubt, what a dream killer it can be.

We sit at our desks with no one to answer to and skip through what we’re doing without ever really getting anywhere because of a lack of direction and/or self doubt. I did it for years myself and now view those years as a total waste of time. I was playing at being an internet marketer and not working towards being one and that is so silly.

As I said, last year was my best year since coming online and I want this year to be even better. Not only for myself but for my readers as well.

So I ask you again: What would you like to achieve this year?

Would you like to create your own product or products?

Would you like to start creating videos?

Maybe you’re already doing something and want to improve on it…

If you haven’t created a plan for the year and are still unsure of what you’d like to achieve please let me know in the comments below and let’s see what we can do about it.

Experienced Bloggers: Did you ever suffer from self doubt and find yourself held back by it? If so please let us know how you got over it in the comments below.

Please share this post with your friends and followers by using the buttons to the side and lets help as many people as possible achieve their dreams this year.

Until next time, picture your dreams

Over to you Steve:

You work on the world wide web but do you really consider your business to be global?

I was on the same coaching course as Barry back in 2009 and since then I have become a product creator, an affiliate, a traffic generator, email newsletter creator, list builder etc etc…and most importantly I became tired…and if I’m honest a little bit jaded by IM.

Lot’s of people peddling their wares and newbie suckers being taken in and ‘being looked after’ until the money runs out.

There had to be a better way…I just didn’t know what it was…until now.

As an Internet Marketer would you like to have any of the following:

• A Place where your completed product is always available for sale in the market place
• No fees if you don’t make a sale for a little while
• A place where there are hundreds of thousands of affiliates all willing to promote your product
• And millions of potential customers all ready to buy.

Where is this magical place?

Why – it’s the App Store in iTunes.

Since October, I have been converted some of our video golf coaching programmes into iPhone & iPad Apps and we have just made a sale to our 26th different country.

For me the journey to learn how to create Apps has not been as complicated as learning to build websites or mini-sites and affiliate pages etc, – In fact the whole process has been very rewarding…especially when the app is completed and you really can set and forget it and get on with making the next one.

And to top it off, Apple only takes 30% from my sales revenue…which compared to the 75% I used to give away to ClickBank affiliates is just an absolute bargain.

If you could go back 5 or 6 years on the internet, with the IM knowledge you currently have – do you think you could make a decent living. Everyone says how much easier it used ot be back then…well in my opinion the App market is exactly where the good old w.w.w. was 5 years ago…

….and it truly is global.

Here’s a little picture of our Apps being prepared for the Christmas Period…for the next two weeks I can just sit back and think about all the people downloading our apps and paying us a little bit of money each time…happy days!

As John Thornhill teaches – ‘Many Streams Make a River’ – he’s right and in eight short weeks we have successfully developed nine golf apps…and that’s not something I would ever have imagined being able to do properly with my Clickbank products.

All shiny and new

I wish all Barry’s readers a very festive holiday season and I urge you to check out the App market while the opportunity is still so big. It’s not as complicated as it may sound, and as Barry will testify, back in 2009 I was a complete non techie – so if I can do it anyone can

Happy Marketing

Steve King Weekend Golfers

Thanks very much for such a detailed post Steve, I will of course respond more in my comment below.

If you would like submit a guest post please view my Guest Post Page and if you can agree to the guidelines there then please feel free to contact me via the link on the page.

Share your thoughts!!

I hope that you’ve enjoyed the post and have been able to take some inspiration from it. If you have any questions or comments for Steve please leave them below and he will reply to you personally.

Please use the buttons below, or to the side, and help me share this content with your friends and followers. You never know this could be just what they needed

Until next time, see what you can do differently

Hi all, thanks for stopping by.

As part of the Learn With Sally coaching we have to conduct an interview with an expert and then create a product from the interview. There are a variety of product types to choose from but the most important part to start with is choosing the expert and getting them to agree to an interview.

As I’ve been blogging over the last couple of years I’ve come across plenty of experts that are really advanced on their subject so choosing one to interview could have been a difficult task on it’s own.

However, choosing my expert wasn’t difficult as someone has really stood out to me for a long time. Nearly every blog I visit has also been visited by this person who always leaves exceptional comments adding value to the original post and offering advice and encouragement where fitting.

So I got in touch with this person and asked if they would allow me to interview them over Skype. Thankfully she agreed and was actually thrilled to have been asked

Adrienne Smith: Is a passionate and extremely focused blogger that is able to apply herself to her work in a way that others wish they could match, I know that I do anyway. She has an excellent blog, full of great content aimed at helping people find their way to success with the minimum amount of stress. As she makes her way around the internet and finds good information, tools and tips that help her she details them in her blog posts, so as to help us all and save us time trying to locate them ourselves. Some of the information and tools we wouldn’t even think of using if it wasn’t for Adrienne pointing them out as well as detailing the benefits of them.

Adrienne’s the Queen of the shout out sharers and is always telling people where she found the information, linking to it and explaining how she has used it to her advantage but more importantly how we can use it to our advantage.

Many of you will already know Adrienne through her commenting on your blogs, through her blog or through her Social Media interaction. She has a presence on all of the Social Media Networks: Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and LinkedIn, and offers encouragement to everyone she engages with. Giving us tips on how to make the most of our social media accounts, even to the extent of showing us how to set up our profiles to look as professional as we possibly can.

Adrienne also creates videos that she uploads to YouTube offering help and assistance by way of tutorials and demonstrations. There are currently 168 videos on Adrienne’s channel so be sure to check them out as well

I can’t sing Adrienne praises loud enough as she’s offered me words of encouragement for both on and off line issues that I’ve had to deal with during my time online.

I have a few questions that I will be putting to Adrienne during the interview but I thought I would ask my readers if you had any specific questions that you would like me to ask Adrienne.

So please leave a comment below and let me know what question you need answers to. It doesn’t matter if you see someone else has left a comment asking the same question as it shows how popular that question is. Those questions that are repeated will move up the list.

Oh and please use the buttons below to share this post with your friends and followers

Until next time, ask away

Hi all, thanks for stopping by.

Journey To Success Part 7

Focus, Time and Money

Creating a manageable budget for both:

Before we start on the post let me put a little scenario to you:

You have a limited (or no) knowledge of plumbing and you need a new bathroom suite. So you go along to the builders merchants, pick out a new suite that suits your requirements and buy it.

Once it has been delivered do you:

A, Enrol in the local college for an evening course on basic plumbing for six months. Then go and buy all the tools and materials needed to carry out the job and then take the following 2, 3 or 4 weekends trying to install the new bathroom suite. During which time you and your family sit at home with crossed legs and pegs on your noses?

B, Call in a plumber that has the knowledge, skills, tools and materials needed and can get the job done in a day? Allowing you to get on with other things during this time and the 2, 3 or 4 weekends you would’ve spent doing it yourself.

The vast majority of us would obviously go for option B, call in a professional and get the job done in the minimum amount of time with the minimum amount of fuss/stress and end up with a much better result.

When it comes to creating any form of business, be it on or off line, we need to understand that we have these two choices:

We do the work ourselves and use our Time,

We pay someone else and use our Money.

What you need to do is create a manageable budget for both.

In part 2 of the series we created an overall plan where you listed the tasks you had to complete in order to achieve your dream. We also worked out how to manage your time and work your tasks around the time you have available.

Some of these tasks, like the bathroom scenario above, might just be a bit to time consuming and leave you frustrated at having to learn even more new skills or buy even more tools to carry them out.

Well the good news is that you don’t have to learn every skill needed in order to achieve your dream. You can pay others to do the tasks that you find to time consuming or difficult to do yourself.

For example: When I wrote Ease The Squeeze With Auctions I wrote the eBook, the salespage and the affiliates page but I didn’t create the graphics for it. I would have found it far too time consuming to learn all the new skills needed to create them so I outsourced the job to GFX-1, which saved me loads of work and allowed me to get on with other aspects of the package. Not to mention the money for the tools I’d have needed to create the graphics.

You can do the same for your creation

There are literally thousands of people queueing up to complete your tasks for you, all you need to do is delegate and of course pay them

This is when it comes down to the nitty gritty, where you need to work out a few factors.

Time Versus Money

Take a look at the tasks you have to complete and see if you find any to difficult or time consuming. If you do make a note of them and then break them down:

Do you need to buy software to complete the task? If so how often would you use the software thereafter? Never, Once, Twice? = Outsource.

Do you have to learn new skills that could take you months to do so and you’re not really interested in learning them but you know the task needs doing? = Outsource.

Is there a task that you would find to time consuming that would really hold you up when you have other tasks that you want to get on with? If so you could consider outsourcing it so you can get on with those other tasks.

If you think a task is going to take you 10 hours and you price your time at $15 an hour that’s $150, so if you can get the task done for a fraction of that price it may be worth your while outsourcing it.

Maybe you struggle with typing, this is a skill you do need to learn but you could feel more comfortable talking and letting some software do the typing. If so you could try using Dragon Naturally Speaking.

Or you could try a Transcription Service: You record your voice and send the transcription service the audio file and they’ll type it up for you. I know the person that owns this company and she always delivers First Class Transcriptions.

Like I said there are people queueing up to carry out every task you can think of so decide which, if any, you want to outsource and which you’re able to complete yourself.

So where do you find these people to do the tasks for you?

Odesk caters for pretty much every aspect you’ll ever need but be aware that they charge accordingly.

Elance covers all of your writing needs but rather than having a price list you enter a description of the job you need doing and the writers interested in doing the job come back to you with their quotes. You then look into those that offer an affordable price and make your selection.

Write Swap also cover all of your writing needs but here the writers will have set prices for set jobs. You can of course enter a job and ask people to offer a quote for it.

Fiverr offers a collection of people offering to do a wide variety of jobs for $5.00. You need to be a little cautious over at Fiverr and be sure to check the persons feedback before placing an order.

Please Note: I bought an excellent eBook via Kathy Dobson’s blog called Fiverr All Stars @ $4.95 which could save you wasting your money on those “less than professional people” that offer gigs on Fiverr.

Planet Divinity offer Pre-made Websites for eBooks, Affiliates and Software.

GFX-1 offer Personalized Graphics, Mini Websites and pretty much any graphics you need.

Remember that it is important that you learn the skills you’re going to use on a regular basis but for those jobs that just need doing now and again you may be better off letting others do them for you.

After all Henry Ford didn’t build every car himself did he?

“Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs” Henry Ford

I hope that you have found this post useful and that it helps you keep pushing towards your goal. If so please pass the word to others that you feel may benefit from it and if you use Twitter, Facebook, Google’s +1 or any other Social Networking sites use the buttons below, or to the right, to help pass it on for me please.

The Journey To Success is a Blog Carnival that is being organised by Mandy Allen in which some Masterclass bloggers are putting together a series of monthly blog posts detailing The Journey To Success. If you haven’t read the previous posts in this series please follow the links below to do so.

As always your comments are very much appreciated so please feel free to add to the post in any way at all. The best comments will be included in the eBook, attributed to the comment author and linked to their blogs

Until next time, divide, conquer and continue

Hi all, thanks for stopping by.

Journey To Success Part 6

Learn From Your Mistakes, Back Up and Start Again.

The Journey To Success is a Blog Carnival that is being organised by Mandy Allen in which some Masterclass bloggers are putting together a series of monthly blog posts detailing The Journey To Success. If you haven’t read the previous posts in this series please follow the links below to do so.

Part 1: Passionate Focused Thinking

Part 2: Develop Specific Goals To Attain Your Dreams

Part 3: Taking Action

Part 4: Learning As You Go

Part 5: Never Give Up, Focus and Hard Work

On to part 6: Learning from your mistakes, back up and start again.

We’ve all heard the saying “everyone makes mistakes” and it’s very true. Regardless of who we are and what we do we all make mistakes from time to time, such is life. The important thing is to learn from those mistakes and turn them into lessons learnt and stepping stones to success.

Notice that I used the plural for mistakes and lessons? That’s simply because we will make many mistakes along the way and as I’ve said these mistakes need to be turned into lessons.

When we were in school, college or starting our careers we had someone there ready to check our work and point out our mistakes. We would then have to go back and start again making the corrections along the way.

Unfortunately when it comes to working online most of us work alone and when we make a mistake it can be hard to realise that we’ve actually made one. Which is why we need to test everything as we go.

When I first started working online I was selling eBooks on eBay and created a short cut to my eBay store on my desktop. Little did I know that the text displayed on my desktop was not actually the URL as it had changed a forward slash (/) to a hyphen (-). Which meant that for the month or so that I was copying and pasting the wrong link I was actually wasting my time, not only that but I then had go back make all the corrections and waste even more time

But worse still was the fact that the customers who received that broken link must have looked upon me as an amateur. Which of course I was but I didn’t want to look that way.

Now I test every link as I make them. I always have a notepad doc open on my desktop and when I’m putting a link together I do it in notepad and then test it before adding it to any emails, pages or products.

If you find one of your links is broken it is normally a wrong character or one missing, like in my case I had a – in place of a /

Fixing broken links is quite easy but what about the more technical stuff or products?

When it comes to products we should always ask a few people to check them for us, put the products  through their paces and report back to us with their honest views. Then collate all points people make and work through them making corrections as we go. It is far better to be embarrassed with our friends than it is with our customers or clients. Friends will laugh it off, clients will slag you off.

For the technical stuff search YouTube and see if you can find any videos that offer a solution. If you find something close but it doesn’t quite solve your problem ask the video creator by leaving a comment.

If you can’t find the anything and have to work through it yourself always make notes of what you’re doing and the steps you’re taking in trying to find a solution. This can become really frustrating but it has to be done, we always need to correct our mistakes before we move on and it slips our mind.

Once you’ve found the solution you can go through the steps you took and use the print screen button on your keyboard then paste it into the Open Office writer or Word and create your own little ebook from it. Not only do you then have it for future reference but you may find other people also suffer from similar mistakes and the ebook you’ve made could then be offered and another friendship blossoms.

Better still, you could create a video of the steps you took to correct the mistake, again you have it for future reference should you ever need it. There’s free software available from CamStudio that is easy to use and then if needed you just watch your video to refresh your memory. You could purchase a headset with a microphone and talk about each step as you take it. Then upload it to YouTube and others with the same problem have a solution which then offers the chance of them connecting with you.

Above all else remember to learn from your mistakes and turn them into lessons learnt

“There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they’re necessary to reach the places we’ve chosen to go.” Richard Bach

I hope that you have found this post useful and that it helps you keep pushing towards your goal. If so please pass the word to others that you feel may benefit from it and if you use Twitter, Facebook, Google’s +1 or any other Social Networking sites use the buttons below to help pass it on for me please.

Please Note: I will be creating an eBook from this series of blog posts so if you can add to the posts in anyway at all please do so in the comments below. The best comments will be included in the eBook, attributed to the comment author and linked to their blogs

Until next time, stay positive and keep learning

Since getting over my blog issues, which I detailed in my last post, I’ve been busy catching up with my Learn With Sally coaching, which had been going really well until the blog issues kicked in Obviously those issues took priority as without a blog there’s not much point in trying to apply more to it

Anyway I’m now getting back on track and have been catching up with the modules. I now had to create a Power Point Presentation so I thought; Ok I’ll create one about the Learn With Sally coaching and my journey so far.

Although I’ve created many videos before I’ve never created one with Power Point and I don’t mind admitting that it caused some frustration.

During the first recording the animations came in really slow and seemed to sit in mid flight for what seemed an age whilst I was talking about the relevant point. I stopped recording after the first slide and went to check my work: Rubbish, delete it and start again!

Second attempt: Close all other programs and try again. Same issues with the same results, animations sitting mid screen whilst I’m talking about them. Delete it and start again!

Third attempt: Take a look through the settings and see how to alter screen speed, ha ha found it Performance: Disable display acceleration during capture. So off I went again creating my first Power Point video, I got to the end of the second slide and stopped to check my work. Sheeesh where’s my voice gone?? Delete it and start again!

Fourth attempt: Check settings for audio, errrr record from CD Player? Ok, select my headset from the list and get recording again. So I then recorded the first 2 slides and checked the results on Camtasia. Animations and voice working together as one, rinky dinky doo lets get on with the rest of the slides.

I then recorded each slide individually and checked it before moving onto the next one. During the process I found that I had to select my headset for the audio unit every time I wanted to record a new slide.

I finally got to the end slide and now just had to put them all together in Camtasia and enter the Transitions from one slide to the next. That was simple enough as Sally had shown us how to do that, so it was now time to save the video.

And now it’s time to show it to the world, so allow me to introduce my very first Power Point presentation: Learn With Sally, The Journey So Far

Oh and don’t forget you can now watch it full screen as it’s shot in HD

To get your hands on the first modules follow the link to Learn With Sally The Replays

As you know I love to read and reply to your comments so please tell me what you thought of the video and if you have any additional tips for me please feel free to leave them below.

Oh and please use the buttons below to help me spread the word.

Until next time, Push yourself and the boundaries that restrict you

Hi all, thanks for stopping by.

Journey To Success Part 5

Never Give Up, Focus and Hard Work

Please note: If you haven’t read the previous posts in this series please follow the links below and do so. Be sure to read the comments and replies as they can often add a wealth of information to the original post and if you find a comment that you would like to reply to please feel free to do so, just hit the Reply link beneath the comment. The person that left the comment will automatically receive an email containing your reply, allowing them to continue the conversation. Alternatively you can leave a comment of your own

Part 1: Passionate Focused Thinking

Part 2: Develop Specific Goals To Attain Your Dreams

Part 3: Taking Action

Part 4: Learning As You Go

Moving on, part 5: Never Give Up, Focus and Hard Work.

As I’ve said before, you will hit hurdles, road blocks and on occasion brick walls and think to yourself this is to hard, there has to be an easier way….

That’s only natural to think that when you’re up against it but rest assured we’ve all been there. You have to battle on and never give up, it does take focus and hard work to reach our goals, but they are reachable. Let me put it another way “If this was easy we’d all be millionaires” wouldn’t we!?

The worst thing you can do when you hit a wall and think you don’t know what to do next is give up and move onto another project. Again I speak from experience here as I done just that and even now I can go back to my old files and find half done projects….. What a waste of time they were.

I remember reading a story in an eBook a few years ago and it’s stuck with me ever since. I can’t remember the story exactly but I do remember the message it gave me. The author likened our projects to cars and the story went something like this:

The names have been changed to protect the innocent

Barry and Ted both started working on their cars at the same time. They both had a shell, wheels, steering wheel and brakes. So when they were ready they got behind their cars to start pushing. Barry sat there deep in thought while Ted got his shoulder behind the car and started pushing, looking back he shouted “oi Barry, you’ll never get to where you wanna be by sitting still”, “you mug” he muttered under his breath as his car began rolling forward.

Ted was pushing his car with all his strength but after a while it started to get heavy so he lowered his shoulder even more and gave it all he could. He had just started climbing a hill when he had to put the brakes on and catch his breath.

Just as he looked up he saw a new shiny sports car that promised to get him up that hill in lightening speed and it only need a minimum amount of work doing on it. So he ditched his first car, jumped into the sports car and went rip roaring up the hill.

A mile or 2 later, as he took a bend quicker than he could handle, he clipped the kerb and suffered a blow out. So having pulled to the side he thought he’d fix the problem. He checked the manual and thinking it was written in a foreign language he dumped it and checked the boot (trunk) for some tools to try and fix it himself, but none were to be found. I know, he thought, I’ll phone the help desk. So that he did, only to find it was an answer phone and he’d have to wait for a return call.

Back to pushing then, he got behind the sports car and continued up the hill. Boy oh boy this is getting heavy he thought to himself. After another mile he stopped to put the brakes on and have a look at the road ahead. He saw what he thought was the top of hill and got a little excited, ye-ha not much further now. Ted then noticed a pick up truck with a custom paint job that looked fantastic, a bit heavier than he had wanted but there’s only a little way to go to reach the top and this truck would do everything he needed and some…..

Before deciding what to do he tried the help desk again only to find the answer phone again.

Frustrated at having to sit still or push again, he decided to ditch the sports car and go with the truck, after all it had a custom paint job, big flash lights, nudge bars with all the bells and whistles. Again it only needed a tiny amount of work doing and then it’d be able to do everything Ted ever wanted. Having regained some of his strength he got his shoulder behind the truck and got pushing again.

After just a few hundred meters it was getting to much to handle and began getting the better of ol’ Ted, so he turned his back to it and dug his heels in. Trying in desperation to stop the truck rolling back down the hill, he was really up against it now.

Looking up in the distance he saw a familiar car coming out of a side turning, “that mug Barry must have taken a wrong turn, look at him, still pushing the same jalopy” Ted thought to himself as he slipped back down the hill a little further.

As Barry’s “jalopy” got closer, Ted realised that Barry wasn’t pushing it he was actually driving it…… “How the………”

Barry got closer and recognized Ted so pulled over to talk to him. Ted immediately asked “How comes you’ve got that thing driving then Barry?”.

“Simple really Ted” Barry replied, “before I started pushing I thought about what the car needed”. “It needed windows first, so when I get tired I can get in the car and have a good look around for the direction I needed to take.

Whilst having the windows fitted I asked them to fit some mirrors, so I could check behind me in case I missed anything along the way.

Once I had the windows and mirrors fitted I wanted lights so I could see in the dark. Then came the seats so I could get comfortable with the car, then came the gear box”

“The gear box? Why not go straight for the engine?” asked Ted.

“What’s the point of having an engine that’ll rev up but never get you anywhere?” replied Barry “once I had the gear box fitted then I went for the engine. Now I’m driving to the paint shop to get the car sprayed, then I’ll be ready to show it off to everyone”.

“How did you know where to get the work done?” Ted asked.

“That was easy Ted, I used my windows” replied Barry.

The moral of the story is:

When it gets hard, which it does, keep pushing the same car (project) and use your windows to look around for the help you need. Keep visiting the forums and blogs you’ve found and if Tom, Dick or Harry offer you a flash sports car remember your car’s already moving, you just needs to keep pushing it.

We know that life can get in the way some times and after a hard days work you may want to chill out on the sofa and just relax in front of the TV. We could all do that but it isn’t going to get you over the hurdle.

You have to keep pushing yourself to reach your goal. If you get stuck leave that task and pick the one above it on your plan. You will probably have an ah ha moment and find the answer comes to you, then go back and finish that task.

Just think:

“If man could of got off the ship in a storm we’d never have crossed the ocean”

I hope that you have found this post useful and that it helps you keep pushing towards your goal. If so please pass the word to others that you feel may benefit from it and if you use Twitter, Facebook, Google’s +1 or any other Social Networking sites use the tools available to help pass it on for me please.

The Journey To Success is a Blog Carnival that is being organised by Mandy Allen in which some Masterclass bloggers are putting together a series of monthly blog posts detailing The Journey To Success. If you would like to keep up with the series pop your name and email address in the boxes below and I’ll send you an email every time my blog is updated.

Please Note: I will be creating an eBook from series of blog posts so if you can add to the posts in anyway at all please do so in the comments below. The best comments will be included in the eBook, attributed to the comment author and linked to their blogs

Until next time, stay strong and keep pushing

What a buzz I had last night……

I have to tell you the coaching I’m getting from Sally Neills new Learn With Sally coaching program is far better than I could ever of imagined.

Not only has Sally had me facing my fears and pointed out some mistakes I’ve been making with Social Networking. She’s now got me kicking my fears into touch, well one so far but with her teaching style I know that the other fears will follow the same route.

You may recall that only 3 weeks ago I told you about my fear of talking live on a webinar. Well last night that fear was firmly kicked into touch, thanks to Sally

You see, Sally had asked if anyone wanted to help her on the webinar and be a co-organizer. Never one to shy away from trying new things I let Sally know that I was up for it.

So last night I logged into the webinar 30 minutes early and had a good ol’ chat with Sally before my fellow students came online. Sally ran me through the control panel and then we chatted about various other things.

Then it was time to begin the webinar, so I was making my notes during the slides and taking in what Sally was saying. Then it came to the questions and answers session and Sally switched the controls over to me.

I thought the nerves would kick in, my belly would rumble, my bottom might burp and my teeth might chatter…. but that didn’t happen.

Sally and I had already discussed that I would run my fellow students through my last blog post. Which fitted in really well as this weeks module is about creating videos and my last post was the results of my video challenge.

So I introduced myself, which was pointless as Sally had already done so, and started talking about the post and the help it could offer everyone with their video creations. Not only by the lessons being given in the videos but also by the ideas it could generate for creating their own videos.

I think I may have started to waffle slightly towards the end but nothing major. I then handed the controls back to Sally who then dealt with a couple of questions, one of which was about my soon to be famous belly rumble… Thanks Ian, I suppose that’s pay back for the Dark Horse

At the end of the webinar Sally told us who was next to co-organize our next webinar, and boy oh boy are we in for a treat.

The Fabulous Fear Fighter AKA The Purple Princess AKA Nikki Stephens is going to face yet another fear, and this girl is getting them out of the way big style. Congratulations Nikki you deserve a bravery award

Any way I’d better get off as it’s my 22^nd wedding anniversary today, so I’m off to spend some time with the wife

As you know I love to read and reply to your comments so tell me:

Has anything got you buzzing lately?

And if you have any online fears what are they? Maybe I can help you face them

Until next time, Face a fear and make a buzz, it’s a great feeling